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ESPELETTE, France (Reuters) – Britain's Geraint Thomas will win his first Tour de France after holding the leader's yellow jersey in the penultimate special on Saturday.
at the Champs-Elysees Sunday, Welshman, 32, will give Team Sky its sixth title in seven years after Bradley Wiggins in 2012 and Chris Froome in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Froome was the favorite He retained his title but he paid the price for the efforts he made to win the Giro d'Italia in May, as he simply failed to become the first man in 20 years to win the Giro-Tour double
Froome the 31 km time trial against Saint-Pee-sur-Nivelle, won by only one second by world champion Tom Dumoulin , Thomas coming back third at 14 seconds of time.
Thomas leads Dumoulin by 1:51 and Froome by 2:24 after the lanky Britan jumped Slovenian P rimoz Roglic, who cracked in the last stage of the competition
Thomas dominated the provisional rankings at the first checkpoint but the Briton rolled carefully up the line, taking no risk on sometimes slippery roads to get his first big title. He posed for cameras with his national flag and Dave Brailsford, the man behind all the victories of Team Sky at the Tour de France, which was raised in Wales.
Froome, who started the race as a team leader but eventually had to concede defeat to Dumoulin. But he has at least recovered a podium after being ranked fourth overall after Friday's last mountain stage.
Dumoulin stage winner said: "It's an amazing day. It was stressful, however, because this morning I could not find my costume. world champion and I had to ask my sponsor to give me a new one at the last minute.
"What a day of madness." [UnbeauFroomeadtoldjournalists:"It'sagreatdealonthepodiumwithGerryCanada"afteraverydifficultdayyesterday"Jenwouldnothavebeenabletopostponeit"
HAPPY TO SURVIVE
Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe and world champion Peter Sagan, of Slovakia, both finished on time and are ready to claim the polka dot jersey for mountain rankings and green jersey for point classification "Yesterday it was very hard, I'm happy to have survived," said Sagan, who dropped Wednesday in a descent.
"Today, it was OK and tomorrow is the end of the Tour."
Frenchman Pierre Latour finishes 13th overall and clinches the white jersey for the best runner under 25.
(Julien Pretot's report, edited by Neville Dalton)
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